GRIDIRON GLORY: Historic NFL jerseys on display at Patriot Place

Sunday

Jan 29, 2017 at 11:07 AM

By Jay N. Miller / For The Patriot Ledger

FOXBORO – There’s blood spattering Bobby Layne’s 1957 jersey, which is no surprise since the gritty Detroit Lions quarterback didn’t have a facemask. There are two large hand pockets, located one atop the other, on the front Brett Favre’s jersey, and feeling inside, the Sherpa lining tells you they did keep his hands warm in those Green Bay winters. There’s a customized round hole at the side of the belly area in Dan Fouts’ jersey, because the Chargers’ star was nursing a back injury, and every trip to the sidelines he’d be hooked up to electrodes to keep his back muscles loose.

Those are just some of the fascinating details to be savored at “The Fabric of Football” exhibit at The Hall, presented by Raytheon, at Patriot Place through August. The Grand Hall in the museum devoted to the Patriots is hosting the official, game-worn NFL uniform jersey collection of Lou Lampson. Or, at least part of Lampson’s massive collection, that part devoted to quarterbacks. There are 41 different signal callers represented here, including 16 Hall of Famers, and recipients of 31 different Most Valuable Player Awards. Nineteen of the passers here threw for more than 200 touchdowns, and 10 of them threw for more than 250. There are nine player’s jerseys in this collection who’ve thrown for more than 40,000 yards.

According to The Hall official Bryan Morry, Lampson is a retired AT&T worker, but he spent much of his off time photographing NFL games. He cultivated relationships with various team and stadium personnel, and began collecting game-worn jerseys, especially those connected to significant events in the league’s history. For example, there are most of the Super Bowl starting quarterbacks in this bunch, and specifically both starting QBs from the game’s first 13 years. Overall 30 of the first 31 Super Bowl starting QBs are represented here.

Of course football jerseys are common apparel in these parts, where it often seems like every other person is wearing Tom Brady’s No. 12 Patriots jersey, especially on weekends when the team is playing. But Lampson began his collection long before it was a trendy thing, and so it was just his friendship with an assistant equipment manager that led to his acquiring Joe Namath’s jersey from the legendary Super Bowl III.

There are some other marvelously eclectic jerseys, such as the Layne one, which came from the ‘57 game where the Lions feisty quarterback broke his leg, rendering him out for the rest of the season. Layne had already led Detroit to a pair of NFL titles earlier in that decade, and his understudy Tobin Rote stepped in to lead the Lions to that ‘57 crown.

Rote is an interesting case, as he bounced around the league and ended up as John Hadl’s backup with San Diego in 1963. When Hadl was sidelined, Rote stepped in and helped the Chargers win the ‘63 AFL championship, when – dare we remind you – they beat the Boston Patriots. Rote’s Chargers jersey is here, as is the Patriots first star quarterback, Babe Parilli’s.

Steve Grogan and Drew Bledsoe are the two other Patriots jerseys represented here, but the collection’s total for former Patriots is a total of seven, with Joe Kapp, Doug Flutie, Jim Plunkett, and ... wait for it ... Pats QB Vinny Testaverde.

The display is arranged more or less by NFL divisions, and also with some geographic consideration, and some other categories. A row of the now-defunct USFL jerseys includes Flutie, Jim Kelly, and Brian Sipe – all of whom went on to solid NFL careers. Two of the oldest jerseys belong to former Houston Oilers, Pete Beathard and George Blanda.

Oakland QB Daryl LaMonica’s jersey has the stirrup that went down between the legs, buttoning up so it wouldn’t come out – which of course also makes it the opposite of a tear-away jersey. But looking at the size of the LaMonica uniform, it seems so small you wonder how they got shoulder pads under it, and it must have been so tight on the player no one would be able to get a good grip on his shirt anyway.

We had the benefit of Morry guiding our tour, but there are fascinating nuggets about every uniform, many of them noted on the placards beneath every jersey. For instance, notice how much larger the name and number are on Roman Gabriel’s vintage Rams jersey; the team did that because most seats in the old L.A. Coliseum were so far from the field. On the flip side of that, Al Davis didn’t like names on his Raiders jerseys, so when he added them, he made them very small.

Football fans can revel in the history of each jersey, whether it’s the Broncos uniform John Elway wore during his epic 98-yard winning drive in 1986, or the one Bears free spirit Jim McMahon was wearing when a lineman body-slammed him in ‘86. Randall Cunningham’s Eagles jersey comes from the memorable 1988 game against the Bears known as The Fog Bowl.

Eight of the jerseys are autographed, not counting those like Layne’s that are marked with the players’ blood. But it’s a riveting trip through the game’s history, and through the evolution of uniforms, from three-time MVPs like Johnny Unitas and Favre, to perhaps the least-known QB here, Bob Berry – but even Berry had his time in the spotlight, making the Pro Bowl with Atlanta in ‘73.

Obviously, Lampson has a unique and impressive collection. Here’s the best part: his jerseys are not just limited to QBs, and future exhibits will likely showcase jerseys from iconic players at other positions. But for now, the 41 quarterbacks represented here are a dazzling history lesson.

The rest of The Hall is also a mind-boggling array of history, squarely focused on the Patriots and football in New England. The Hall already has a jersey display, highlighting the jerseys of each high school team that has won a Super Bowl at Gillette Stadium – yes, that was a Duxbury No. 22 right in the middle of the display, and a Hanover jersey was close by.

Fans can relive each of the Patriots’ Super Bowls in the Hall, and there are plenty of other cool things to occupy young and old. There’s an electronic gizmo that lets you try to duplicate Malcolm Butler’s interception against Seattle, and others that let you try to match Adam Vinatieri’s field goal in the famous Snow Bowl against Oakland.

Back on that uniform theme, there’s a genuine 1931 Providence Steamrollers uniform, worn by Milford’s George Pyne, for the team that won the NFL title in 1928. Subsequently one of Pyne’s grandsons played for the Patriots.

Morry related a story about how The Hall acquired the huge 1963 AFL Divisional Champions banner that hangs off one wall. It seems the banner was hanging at Fenway Park, unattended and relatively ignored at one 1964 game, so a couple of fans simply took it home. Years later one of them called the team and offered to give it to The Hall.

The Hall has dozens of significant game balls, the jersey LeGarrette Blount wore when he scored his record-breaking TD this season, and all kinds of Tom Brady memorabilia – including his most treasured trophies. There are filmed highlights at several displays and a movie theater that shows a short film of Patriots history. There’s even a blown up copy of the $15 million check Robert Kraft wrote to begin the process of buying the team – and close by, the never-used logo for the St Louis Stallions, which is what former owner James Busch Orthwein intended to call them when he moved the franchise.

We’re all thankful that didn’t happen, and a trip to The Hall will remind you of that. It’ll probably also prompt you to take a closer look at those jerseys downstairs in the Patriots Pro Shop, although we doubt any of them are as cool as Bobby Layne’s blood-spattered relic.